Welcome Sullivan - Home Birth with Midwives

Sullivan's Birth February 1, 2013

Hi Rhonda!

We are pleased to announce little Sullivan Aurora arrived February 1st at 7:46 AM. She weighed 6 lbs 9 oz and entered the world face up!

Our birth story in brief goes like this. Almost all of Thursday, January 31st Marie was experiencing painful contractions but we weren't sure it was the real deal. The contractions were erratic and showed no consistent pattern. Around 10 o'clock that evening we starting timing again but this time the contractions were consistently 2 mins apart with a 1 min duration. This confused us as we weren't expecting them to be this frequent while still so short but we called the midwives and by 1 AM the midwives had arrived and everything was happening quickly. At arrival Marie was 6-7 cm dilated and we transitioned from birth balls to the Jacuzzi tub upstairs.

By 5 AM contractions were intense and Marie was nearly fully dilated and we opted to break her water manually. Exhaustion was definitely a factor in this decision and Marie wanted enough energy to push. After breaking the water contractions became very intense and by 6 AM we were pushing. The pushing was making little progress in the tub so we chose to transfer to a bed in a nearby bedroom and it was there that our little Sulli was born!

After giving birth we found out Sulli was face up and her head had been twisted slightly to the right. This caused the stall in progress in the tub but thankfully Marie found the inner strength to persevere and push our beautiful little girl into this world!

Now we are basking in the joy of our little miracle and looking forward to our first reunion with everyone!

The insights and preparation we got from the Healthy Birth Choices class were immeasurably valuable and our midwives said Marie was like a seasoned veteran who had given birth 10 times already and I was the best support partner they had ever seen!

Also you may be interested to know that our placenta was very calcified and was quite difficult to deliver. We almost had to transfer to the hospital due to a concern of hemorrhaging. Thankfully after a quick prayer it was delivered successfully and Marie recovered with an IV the midwives provided.